


Wingtips

by hermitknut



Category: Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb
Genre: Gen, Reference to Torture, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 18:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12393873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermitknut/pseuds/hermitknut
Summary: Fool’s Quest Spoilers. Beloved thoughtstream circa FQ.





	Wingtips

It was curious, the way that falling and flying were alike.

In the darkness  _it was always dark now_  of Chade’s old chamber  _but is that really where they were? Could not this all be a dream, a trick, a madness_ , Beloved waited. Waiting was  like being burned alive, Fitz had said. Of course for Fitz, burning would be the metaphor Fitz would reach for. Hung over water and burned  _the hiss of scorched flesh_. Years ago, Beloved would have thought of ice, of a slow freezing. But now? Now waiting feels like falling. Falling through darkness.

A flutter of wings; the crow landed. On the table, Beloved thought, by the remnants of food. In a way they were beginning to adjust to, Beloved reached out and pushed their thoughts at Motley:  _help yourself_. The bird always seemed to understand. Beloved supposed that was from Fitz  _Fitz please please Fitz help me_ , a gift of their curious merging. There did not seem to be a connection such as Fitz’s with Nighteyes, no, nothing so precious; more an otherwise uncanny level of understanding between them. Alike. Different, shunned, disguised. In fear of being pecked apart by their own. Piebald crow and broken Fool, how appropriate  _how entertaining you are Beloved how long do you think you can keep screaming shall we find out_  but no time for sentiment. Mustn’t be maudlin. Things to do. A plan to prepare, a prophet to find, a catalyst to nudge into place. If he was still a catalyst. But surely he could not be otherwise? Caught between two true prophets, nonetheless. Well, a new prophet and an  _false prophet arrogant deluded idiot_  old prophet. Former prophet. He had to be. He always did. He’d fall into place.  _Falling_.

Feathers rustling across the chamber again. Motley returning to a favoured perch. Short flight in a small space. Wingtips brushing stone. Flying, falling, falling, flying. Only a difference of time, each rise containing the promise of a plummet. What they had in common was death, of course.

Not dreaming of the future felt like falling down a flight of stairs, unstopping, tumbling but not as the Fool had at court  _the finest tumbler in the Six Duchies but that wasn’t enough for you was it_ , rather as once they had fallen down with their head in a sack, coming out black-purple-blue at the end. Except now the sack never came off, and everything was always black.

If you fell and never hit the ground, did that make it flying? Now there was a riddle worthy of a court jester. A philosophy worthy of a wood-carving wise-woman. A witticism worthy of a Jamaillian lord. But they all came to the same thing, didn’t they? All came, in the end, to the pain and the humiliation and the awful, sickening fear, and the darkness. Ash had given them dragon blood, it burned through them like the death of flight, demanding  _tell us who is he who is your child don’t lie now you know what happens to liars_  revenge on wounded flesh and forcing an inhuman vitality. Ha. Inhuman. Fitz would laugh. Or maybe not. Now Beloved could dream, but only backwards, an ability once removed now inverted, all claws and wing-frame and the sharp, bright sky. Dreaming of a dead flight that brought death before its blood feel into the hands of a Fallstar. Words and meanings slippery yet precise,  _like teeth oh you sweet-tongued liar_  and always the flight and fall, fall and flight. Beloved felt their renewed strength coiling in their bones, knew it for what it was. Death’s wings, rising and falling. They would fall, oh yes, in the end, but the flight would come first, and the swoop down. And Fitz would be the claws that raked them all to shreds.

It was curious, the way the flying and falling were alike. 


End file.
